Charlie Hebdo cartoonist Luz, who drew the French satirical mag’s cover image of a weeping Prophet Muhammad after the deadly Paris attacks, announced he is leaving the publication — citing his anguish over the deaths of 12 colleagues.

Renald Luzier said his decision was unrelated to internal strife that has roiled the weekly amid its swelling coffers since the Jan. 7 terror attack, Agence France-Presse reported.

“Each issue is torture because the others are gone. Spending sleepless nights summoning the dead, wondering what Charb (editor Stephane Charbonnier), Cabu, Honore, Tignous would have done is exhausting,” Luz told French paper Liberation, referring to some of his slain co-workers.

Luz, who joined the magazine in 1992, plans to leave in September.

Charlie Hebdo gained worldwide recognition after Islamic brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi gunned down 12 people at its offices because of its cartoons lampooning Muhammad.

Luz drew the magazine’s cover a week later — a defiant image of the Prophet holding a sign saying “Je suis Charlie” (“I am Charlie”) and accompanied by the words: “All is forgiven.”

The financially strapped magazine’s typical print run of 60,000 climbed to a staggering 8 million for the issue after the massacre.

In April, Luz announced he would no longer draw the Prophet, saying it “no longer interests me.”

“Many people push me to keep going, but they forget that the worry is finding inspiration,” Luz told Liberation.

Charlie Hebdo had been teetering on the verge of bankruptcy before donations poured in from around the world after the attacks, as the publication was embraced as a beacon of free speech under the Twitter hashtag #jesuischarlie.

But Luz downplayed the acclaim.

“It fascinates people to think of us as heroes,” he said, the Times of London reported. “Everyone invokes the spirit of Charlie for everything and nothing. The only ones who do not claim it are us at Charlie.”

About 36,000 people from 84 countries sent $4.8 million to Charlie — but some of the 20 staffers have questioned the magazine’s direction. Fifteen wrote an editorial in Le Monde calling for all employees to be made equal shareholders.

Top editor Gérard Biard told The New York Times on Tuesday that discord at the magazine has been exaggerated by French media — adding that finances will be managed carefully and that the donated funds will be given to victims’ families.

“We are not obsessed by Islam,” he told the paper. “We don’t deal with it when it is not in the news.”

Luz, who is under police protection, told Le Monde that he puts on his best underwear daily.

“I say, ‘If you have to die today, you’d better not be wearing ugly shorts,’” said Luz, whose book, “Catharsis,” comes out this week.